Karl Otterstrom began his new role as CEO of Spokane Transit Authority in August.

He succeeds E. Susan Meyer, who retired in December after nearly two decades as the agency’s CEO.

The Journal sat down with Otterstrom to discuss how he got his start in public transportation, how the industry has changed throughout his 16-plus year career at STA, and his hopes for the agency going forward.

How did you decide to pursue a career in public transportation?

 I had been long fascinated by public transportation since I was about eight years old.

When I went to Eastern Washingotn University — it was actually after I served a mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Brazil for two years. I rode a lot of public transportation there — but  I really didn't know what career path I was gonna have.

I was interested in cities. I was interested in public transportation. Sitting down with an adviser before the first week of classes, they sat in front of me the course catalog and I started thumbing through it. I saw a transportation planning class.

I never heard of the term transportation planning. I decided I should take that class on top of the other more normal undergraduate coursework when you don't know your degree.

I showed up for that class and after the first day in the class, I said, this is what I'm doing. I'm gonna be a planner and I really want to see how this goes with transportation planning.

I'd already been a bus rider for STA as I was studying at Spokane Falls Community College, partly as a running start student for a few quarters, and then a few quarters after I graduated high school.

So, I’ve been exposed to public transportation in multiple countries at that point. And then really interested in that opportunity to learn about transportation planning as a field of academic.

Are you still an active user of public transportation here?

 You might say that, yeah.

I ride the bus every day to work and ride it for other purposes — getting to errands and with the family to do things downtown. My wife and I will take the bus to go to the symphony and back, take it out to the airport.

It's a very useful system.

How would you say the past 16 years have prepared you for your new role as the leader of STA?

Certainly being exposed to every part of the organization helps. One of my strengths or something that I really enjoy is understanding the context of how things became the way they are. Knowing that allows me to think about more effective ways to make change and to also to leverage what actually works successfully.

I know the most successful, most valuable thing that STA has going for it is the people that work. Sure. That's looking at all the people, the collective group from the bus drivers and mechanics, people in administration, and executive level.

It takes people who are bright, who are passionate, and committed and willing to learn, because as much as we make it look simple, transit is very complex.

Having that core of understanding the value of the people and saying, how do we leverage this passion, this energy, this expertise to do more?

Not with less, but more with what we have, more effectively.

How has public transportation changed since you started at STA?

I think there's two layers of that. How has it changed at STA and how has it changed nationally?

On the global scale, we obviously faced the pandemic, which changed some of the perspectives. Work from home now is a real thing that has impacted transit ridership and has made a lot of agencies, including ourselves, be more cognizant of the people who are not going to downtown for job in a downtown core, but maybe riding on the weekends, maybe more casual riders.

I think also, technology expectations have dramatically changed.

In 2010, we first introduced our data to Google, where people could trip plan. But that's morphed into, well, not just a trip plan, they want to know when the bus is coming. They want to be able to pay their fare with their smartphone. They want to know that the information that they have about the prediction of the bus is very accurate and down to, you know, updating every five seconds.

It's also being more cognizant of our opportunity with transit to improve equity and accessibility in a community. I think that's always been recognized. Transit is kind of a natural occurring equity tool in a community, but how do you make people aware of it in a way that it's a positive uplift for more people?

Locally, I think we went from a really good transit system in Spokane, and one I can say is a great system, that people not just from the Northwest but other parts of the country are interested in what we're doing.

That includes investing in frequency of service. So many routes run every 15 minutes for most of the day. We have invested in corridors — not just like the city line bus rapid transit, where those are higher investments that require substantial assistance from the federal government — we've identified other corridors where we've invested and made those elevated in their experience in a more cost-effective way.

We’ve heightened the community's awareness of how good that service is by the visual appeal on the street, with better bus stops, with the lighted marker that has the STA logo on it that has real-time information that makes it a really useful part of the system.

What is your overarching goal for STA under your leadership?

What's wonderful is I am fully bought into the board of directors’ plans and visions for the agency. And so, I don't know if I bring anything new, but I hope to be emphatic in advancing STA's mission and its vision to connect everyone to opportunity and its policy goals and its comprehensive plan really to support and enhance areas that people want to be in — our cities, our neighborhoods — and making them more livable.

What I hope to add to that, or to augment really, is how do we really draw everyone at STA into that mission and vision? And do it so effectively that it's something that not only our employees are excited about, but the community at large sees how transit is connecting opportunities, whether that's because you ride the bus, or your student rides the bus, or your employee rides the bus, or somebody in your life that you care about is touched by public transportation service.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.